The crazy storm that rolled through Chicago

I read that someone I know was on his way back from Wisconsin and had to stay in a hotel to get out of the storm. He warned Chicago was going to be next…

I took a look out of my windows and it was crazy outside. The storm was heading straight south, I face north. I decided to take some photos and make a few movies.

I set up my nice camera to take long exposures of the sky… and with my other camera I filmed a movie.

The first clip I posted was of me filming once it started to rain. I zoomed in to see if I could get a better view of the rain coming down. To my surprise a giant bolt of lightning hit the roof about 50 feet from where I was filming. It was crazy loud and totally freaked me out. It happens at about the 14 second mark.

The second is a movie made from the time lapse photos and stitched them together.

This was not the craziest storm I have seen since I have lived here, but it was the closest lightning strike I have seen in a while. Last year my sister was over and we were making her wedding invitations when my biz partner called me and told me there was a tornado headed towards the city. We got out of the office and looked out side and it was just waves of rain. The roof next door had whitecaps on it. My entire wall was covered with water. The windows and doors were pulsating with the wind. I thought they were going to blow inward. We ended up going to the bunker like basement of the building that is attached and waited for it to pass over. There were others down there as well. When it was over we called our mom and told her we were alive. That may have been the worst storm I have seen.

this lightening sound is really crazy. I had seen one near our home, when I was watching outside my room window and enjoying rain and suddenly a big boom came out of nowhere, I remember I dropped my hot coffee mug on me and quickly closed the window